Time And Tides
by faithinthecharm
Summary: When turning back time offers you a second chance, but your mind holds the beginnings at bay can a feeling hold the key?
1. Thief

**Time and tide**

Tiny prologue, will eventually develop to spoiler to 'Human Nature' and Family of Blood' Spoilers.

Nothing belongs to me, otherwise Ten would be to tired to make telly (winks)

Unashamed Rose/Ten fluff, eventually...

Please R&R

**Prologue **

**Thief**

Time is a thief, no one tells you that, but everyone knows, it takes your youth, the spring in your step, makes happenings into memories, and in the case of Rose Tyler, it steals your hope. The hope she felt like she had held forever. That he would come back for her, or that she would find her way back to him.

She was not ungrateful for what he'd done, because of things he'd done, she'd got her dad back, and she lived. Because of him she had seen things that no human being could ever hope to see. Because of him she had loved the most wonderful man in any of the worlds she had ever visited and she got to be the girl in the mansion with the great, rock solid family and a job in the government, exploring the untalked about arena of alien technology

But for all of that she couldn't settle because this place wasn't home, there was no place that could be home for her now, because he was gone, and when she was honest she would admit that to her, he was home.

It didn't surprise her when once again, she dreamed of Bad Wolf Bay, only as she woke, and found herself as always looking for someone who could not possibly be there, she struggled to remember why. Who was it she missed? She fought for the memory, as somehow she knew it's importance shaped who she was.

Rose got up and dressed, something about washing with a jug and basin felt strange, but familiar, and she shrugged off the feeling.

She followed the smell of breakfast to the kitchen and glanced at the newspaper on the table it was dated: 'Monday 1st October 1913'


	2. Shared Dreams

A/N Yes, I know, dates, but I couldn't get that month in between to run in my head right, any idea's let me know and I'll credit you and run it as a flashback.

Script from human nature C/O: **http://who-transcripts. 2**

**Shared Dreams**

"Rose!"

Her guardians voice perpetrated the trance like state she had sunk into, picking up the newspaper without even realizing it.

_'1913? What the f...' _

"Rose!"

Her head snapped up, and the thought disappeared, a dove in the fog.

"Yes, Aunt Lavinia." Rose answered woodenly.

Her aunt tutted. "It is no wonder that your mother had you sent to us from London!"

Rose had been sent to her aunt's a month earlier following what the doctor had diagnosed as a exhaustive collapse, for which he had prescribed a change of air.

"It is no wonder that you have got to the age of twenty one with no particular suitors at all. You are a pretty girl, but this interest in science, and ghosts and goblins, you have developed combined with a lack of proper accomplishments mean that you are not a catch for any decent man." Her aunts whining voice cut deep into her last nerve.

"It does not matter, because no one would measure up." Rose muttered.

"To whom?" Her aunt snapped.

Rose shut her eyes and concentrated. She could almost hear the voice of the man to whom no other" could hope to stand up. It was equal parts mocking and loving, in her dream, but always too far away. In her dream she couldn't touch him, outside of it she couldn't even remember his face, just a tearing all consuming sense of grief. All she really knew is that she had loved him, heart and soul, and now...

"I honestly don't know, but he is out there and when I find him I'll know and so will he!"

Rose stood, leaving the breakfast that had been laid out for her untouched and ignoring the worried look on her aunts face.

The new maid from the 'Farrington School for Boys' cycled down to the village, ducking into the local post office, and thus just missing Rose Tyler's huffy exit from her recently adopted home.

"There's a parcel for Doctor Smith, I know it's early, but I wanted it for before he wakes up." Martha explained, apparently unnecessarily, as the postmaster didn't bother speaking and simply leered at her as he handed over the heavy parcel of historical texts.

Martha rolled her eyes and didn't bother to thank the postmaster as she took the parcel and lugged it out to the basket on the front of her bike. While she was growing used to the mostly unfounded gossip and casual racism, she was determined she would never allow herself to condone it as a symptom of the times.

Martha arrived back at the school in time to take in Doctor Smith's breakfast tray, as she had intended. As she moved about the room she listened to him talk about his dreams and forced herself to smile and hold up her end of the frightening, painful lie life had become, but still she listened, as John Smith spoke.

"Sometimes I have these extraordinary dreams." He said to her, his tone making it clear he was aware he should be painfully embarrassed even talking about them with his servant.

Martha pulled his curtains as she talked. "What about Sir?" It was still strange to her to call The Doctor, 'Sir'.

"I dream I'm this... Adventurer. This...daredevil, a madman. 'The Doctor', I'm called. And last night I dreamed that you were there, as my... companion." The strangeness of the idea made the words come to him slowly, as if he couldn't imagine himself thus. It pained Martha to see it, even as her response did.

"A teacher and a housemaid, sir? That's impossible."

"Ah no, a man from another world, though..."

"Well it can't be true because there's no such thing." Martha responded, watching him stand and walk to his fireplace.

"This thing..." He picked up an old fob watch on the mantelpiece, unaware of the hope in Martha's face as he eyed it "...The watch..." He sighed and placed it back down, uninterested and once again unaware of the sadness in his maid's face as he did so. "Ah, it's funny how dreams slip away" He turned back to face Martha, who reset her expression according to expectations, and listened to him continue, in a bemused tone. "But I do remember one thing; it all took place in the future. In the year of Our Lord two thousand and seven."

"I can prove that wrong for you sir, here's the morning paper." She handed him his newspaper, and smiled at him, in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. "It's Monday, November tenth, nineteen thirteen, and you're completely human, sir. As human as they come."

He smiled back benignly. "Mmm, that's me; completely human"

Martha smiled and left the room, battling to keep control of her emotions. John Smith was a really nice man, but god, she missed The Doctor.


	3. Juxtapositions

**Chapter 3**

**Juxtapositions**

Miss Tyler's two months in the village had proved strange. She felt oddly disjointed from everything around her, as if it was preventing her from doing a chore that was far more important than anything else. It was as if she didn't quite belong, but she wasn't sure why. She remembered her childhood, growing up, talk of her birth in 1892. She remembered that her parents were Mr and Mrs Peter Tyler and that her father worked in newspapers and her mother suffered with her nerves, a family tendency being the supposed cause of Rose's own collapse, but somehow that jarred.

Something, some little nagging voice in the back of her mind that told her she was wrong. Her mother, she somehow knew, while she had a tendency to be a little hysterical, when the occasion called for it, had survived too much, too well, to be accused of suffering from nerves. As for her father, oh God, her poor father, he wasn't really her father, but he and her mother loved each other, very much. Aunt Lavinia, who and what the hell was Aunt Lavinia?

And her, she had seen something that gave her some strength that a girl who had only just reached twenty two should not have, and in that other place, she lived as now, with a constant nagging grief, but there she knew why, and she worked, she fought, she threw everything into getting back to someone who held power over her whole being. There she knew that the love was not returned and hopeless. Perhaps it was better here?

She shook her head, these thoughts were madness, and would keep her here longer than she needed to be. She knew that spending too long ruminating on her dreams was bad for her, they made her heart ache. The sound of hymns rose from the local boys boarding school, that Farrington place. Mostly full of little fools, but she'd heard good things from her new friends about the new history professor, in fact some of them said it was fate, them arriving on the exact same day and all, but as yet she had never managed to meet him. She pushed down devilish thoughts of going up to the school to introduce herself, as that would seem far too forward for a young lady of good breeding, the little nagging voice informed her that she wasn't a lady of good breeding.

Up at the school the man in question was also abstracted, near ignoring Martha as she looked up from her floor scrubbing to speak to him, causing her friend Jenny to wonder aloud.

"Head in the clouds that one, makes me wonder why you're so sweet on him?"

Martha's response was muted, a lie couched in a smaller truth.

"He's just nice to me that's all. Not everyone is what with me being..." She indicated her face with an exasperated expression.

"...A Londoner?" Jenny asked playfully, trying to lift her friend's poor mood with humor.

Martha gratefully recognized the shift and played merrily along. "Good old London town." Both fell to happy laughter, drawing the attention of two of the older boys, who decided then was the time to flex their authoritarian muscles. The stockier of the two fixated on Marta, as he had fixated on another girl a while earlier on the way back up to school from the village. Now, with his ego battered, he was looking for someone to humiliate.

"You? What's your name again?" he demanded

"Martha, Sir, Martha Jones."

"Well then, tell me Jones, with hands like those how can you tell if anything's clean?"

Without waiting for an answer and cackling like hyenas, they wandered away, congratulating themselves on sterling handling of the lower classes, and not being battered down by the one village girl who couldn't take a joke. However neither of them would be would be tangling with Miss Tyler again any time soon,

Once they were out of earshot, Martha responded deadpan. "That's really very funny, Sir."

Down in the village, another, deeply confused, twenty first century girl, was wondering where on earth she learned such language.


	4. Wake Up Rose Tyler

Chapter 4

A/N Yep I know it's been ages and you are well within your rights not to love me anymore, but I'm a busy girl and my many muses do what they like and this one only decided to bite again a few days ago. This chapter should tie up a few things. For The Doctor's section the episode was too perfect, so, see Nurse Redfern's entry, until the hand over of the journal for your John Smith action.

Please R&R as per usual

**Chapter 4**

**Wake up Rose Tyler**

The rest of Rose's day went slowly, as unbeknownst to her the Doctor became ever closer to one of his human co workers, Matron Joan Redfern. She had shyly accepted an invite to the dance at the village hall the next night from one of the farm lads, more because she felt drawn to the place than because of any desire to accompany the poor boy. She just felt that she needed to be there. That it was important to attend, and not for the reason her friends felt it was important to. She had no interest in the dancing, or the potential beau's that might be there. She never knew where to put her feet in the waltz, but she was fairly sure she could kill someone with her thumbs. The men here talked down to her, but in the back of her mind she knew she could hold a gun better than any of them.

From her window she watched a shooting star fall, and as it hit the ground something changed. She screamed and pressed her hands to her temples. Her mind filtered images, memories and sounds.

'_This is Torchwood, authorisation, Tyler 5745. Tell them I'll do it' _

'_Rose the risk…what it'll do to your mind…what if…?' _

'_TELL THEM!'_

'_Yes Ma'am…and your family'_

'_Tell them…I went to save the world, and I love them. Is the device set?'_

'_Yes Ma'am, the threat has been located in 1913, the family of an agent from that time are set to take you in…your memory and capabilities should return at the trigger point.'_

'_And if they don't?'_

'_Then you better hope The Doctor's as good as you say he is'_

'_He is…and Tosh, give the guy a chance, he loves you.'_

'_I know Rosie'_

Then she remembered blinding pain, and then this…becoming Miss Tyler of 14 Ascot Lane. Too knowledgeable to be a decent marriage prospect, too conflicted and lost to be any use to her new 'family' and too forward to make friends easily. And still, with enough recoding retconn in her system to make an elephant forget she'd grieved his loss. She hadn't been able to remember his face or his name, but there had still been a hole where he should have been.

That made her angry. She should have missed her friends, her family, the people she'd left behind, who had been with her while she grieved and rebuilt her shattered life.

That realities wonderful Tosh, who had looked on bemused as Rose had clung to a familiar face on her first day at Torchwood, in spite of the fact that Rose had met_ a_ Tosh rather than_ that _Tosh, but they'd become friends quickly, and unconditionally. Tosh had helped her grieve; Rose had encouraged Tosh's romance with Adam. She had survived because of them, her new team, and changed beyond recognition.

Was she still the Rose Tyler that had loved The Doctor…yes. Would she fall again? No, because she'd never stopped falling in the first place.

With that thought in her mind she blacked out.

'_Time to save the world again, R_ose _Tyler…he needs you.'_


End file.
